ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 03 September 2021
Edited by:
Samad Sepasgozar,
University of New South Wales,
Australia
Reviewed by:
Laura Florez-Perez,
University College London,
United Kingdom
Longhui Liao,
Shenzhen University, China
*Correspondence:
Jianyu Zhao
jianyu.zhao@aalto.fi
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Construction Management,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Built Environment
Received: 24 May 2021
Accepted: 20 August 2021
Published: 03 September 2021
Citation:
Zhao J, Zheng Y, Seppänen O, Tetik M
and Peltokorpi A (2021) Using Real-
Time Tracking of Materials and Labor
for Kit-Based Logistics Management
in Construction.
Front. Built Environ. 7:713976.
doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2021.713976
Frontiers in Built Environment | www.frontiersin.org
doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2021.713976
Using Real-Time Tracking of Materials
and Labor for Kit-Based Logistics
Management in Construction
Jianyu Zhao *, Yuan Zheng, Olli Seppänen, Müge Tetik and Antti Peltokorpi
Department of Civil Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
Improved productivity and the elimination of waste are key goals for lean methods in
construction production control. One such lean method is a kit-based logistics
management in which task-based materials are delivered just-in-time and aligned with
assembly operations on-site. Digital platforms could enable a situational awareness of
work and material flows, potentially increasing the benefit and applicability of kitting. The
aim of the current research is to utilize a real-time indoor tracking of material and labor flows
to evaluate an assembly kit–based management of construction projects. We propose a
linked data framework to connect labor, material, and scheduling information to integrate
heterogenous data. The contribution of the study is threefold: first, a feasible method is
developed to enable real-time detection of work and material flows inside the building for
logistics management purposes. Second, several key performance indicators for effective
evaluation of kit-based production flow in construction are provided, which allows
management to tackle root causes of problems and to enhance timely and productive
logistic solutions. Thirdly, by applying the linked data method, the study introduces a novel
approach to integrate heterogenous data from both indoor tracking and schedules.
Keywords: real-time tracking, construction management, linked data framework, material and labor tracking, data
integration, kitting logistics solutions
INTRODUCTION
Construction sites are frequently thought of as chaotic environments in which waste occurs as a
consequence of complex on-site management. As a result, sites suffer from productivity loss and
waste related to crews’ waiting times, rework, unnecessary movement, material handling, and unused
inventories in workspaces and of materials (Sacks et al., 2010). This complexity has motivated the
development of several production control approaches in construction (Zhao et al., 2019). Lean
construction principles are often applied to enhance workflows and eliminate waste by focusing on
workflow variability to improve overall project performance (Thomas et al., 2002). The variability of
flow is a key root cause of waste (Seppänen et al., 2010), and therefore measuring and addressing
variability is important to eliminate waste and enhance productivity. In this regard, field material
management has become a crucial management process (Grau et al., 2009) to address the variability
of material flows, to minimize waste, and to ultimately improve project performance.
In the context of material flows, the construction process includes numerous wasteful activities
that result from material mishandling on-site. For example, Teizer et al. (2020) monitored shell and
interior construction and indicated the notable wasteful activities, including 1) unnecessary handling
of material (10%), 2) searching for the right resources (6%), and 3) waiting to use the resource (3%),
all of which caused wasted effort related to material mishandling. Misplaced materials cause waste
1 September 2021 | Volume 7 | Article 713976
Zhao et al.
such as rework and delays in tasks (Ju et al., 2012), both of which
hinder labor performance. The spaces used to store materials can
also potentially block workflows (Arbulu and Ballard, 2004) and
affect production progress. Site managers and engineers thus
must improve material handling and production flows by
utilizing materials at the right time and in the right location.
A kitting logistics solution synchronizes material deliveries
with workers’ daily tasks into work location levels (Tetik et al.,
2020) and could play a key part in stabilizing production flows.
Assembly kits, which are carriers that contain material parts for
different tasks (Hanson and Medbo, 2012), are transported
directly to work locations so the materials can be quickly
utilized or installed by workers in the right places without
being stored on-site (Tommelein and Li, 1999). Still, kitting
practices face the challenges of monitoring in time and
efficiently for the direct involvement of workers who use the
material batches in work locations. For example, previous
methods for evaluating the impacts of kitting practices were
based on manual observations and videos (Tetik et al., 2020),
which makes evaluating the solution both labor intensive and
time consuming. Kitting logistics practice requires smooth
information flows among different operations: a situation that
also leads to the potential for automation (Zheng et al., 2020).
The use of automated tracking solutions for material
management could address these challenges and enhance
construction productivity and workflow by providing site
managers with easy-to-use metrics to evaluate the process of
flows. In building projects, automated material monitoring could
help workers know the locations of materials. In this way,
searching times for materials are eliminated, productivity is
improved, and material handling efficiency is enhanced
(Gurmu, 2019).
Despite the expected benefits for site management from
localization technologies (Grau et al., 2009), little research has
been conducted on tracking systems that cover both materials
and workers to support lean principles for enhancing material
management and related workflows. Although the collection of
tracking data based on labor and material could improve
construction material and workflow management, such data is
still isolated from the scheduling information of planned on-site
operations. Such fragmentation leads to difficulties for various
stakeholders when evaluating and comparing the actual labor and
material flow situation with the planned conditions based on an
integrated database. The worker and material positioning data
thus should be combined with the scheduling information in
order to investigate the schedule compliance of labor and material
interactions.
The linked data approach is a set of design principles within
Semantic Web technologies for publishing data in a structured
format (Bizer and Schultz, 2009). Such an approach can structure
heterogenous data with interlinks to provide formalized and
structured data integration. The linked data approach also
provides a machine-readable format for computers to
understand the meaning of the data so they can produce
meaningful query results. While construction industry
researchers have investigated these capabilities of the linked
data approach (Pauwels et al., 2015), they have yet to use the
Frontiers in Built Environment | www.frontiersin.org
Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting
linked data approach to integrate the positional data of workers
and materials with scheduling data.
Based on the above background, our aim is to improve the
management of kit-based practice by implementing a passive
indoor tracking solution to automatically detect the presence
of multiple workers as well as material kits delivered directly
to various work locations. We then evaluate the interactions
of the material kit and labor flows. Previous research has
indicated substantial periods of time when workers are absent
from work locations (Zhao et al., 2019), so we consider an
investigation of how the kitting solution influences the
presence of workers to be an interesting line of research.
New insights could also be gained relevant to the evaluation
of material management practice (e.g., the kitting solution)
and enhancement potentials by tracking both labor and
material kits at the same time. Finally, a linked data
framework is proposed to unite external data streams (e.g.,
scheduling information) to ensure data model
interoperability and to evaluate the compliance of workers
with material kits against the schedule. A broader image of
construction resource interrelations thus can be established
for future application development.
TECHNICAL BACKGROUND
In this section, the technical background is reviewed from
previous studies related to tracking technologies that have
been applied in construction for labor and material
monitoring, linked data, and Semantic Web technologies.
Tracking technologies can be divided into vision- and radio-
based tracking methods. Table 1 summarizes the previous
tracking applications used in the construction industry and
presents conclusions from research related to our empirical
study on tracking solutions for material and labor flows in
construction.
Vision-Based Tracking in Construction
Several vision-based methods have been proposed and
implemented for monitoring site occurrences involving labor,
material, and equipment. The methods are generally easy to
deploy and are non-intrusive (Cai and Cai, 2020), although
achieving smooth and continuous tracking that is satisfactory
for labor and material flows could be a complex undertaking. For
instance, recent research (Asadi et al., 2019) examined the
possibility of using Building Information Modeling (BIM)
coordinate system from camera poses of image frames, which
enabled localization and mapping items between image frames
and BIM views. The research demonstrated the effectiveness of
real-time registration of images with BIMs, which could
potentially enhance visibility of tracking process for resources
such as labor or materials in the BIM platform. However, the
method heavily depends on camera pose estimation and the
interior structure of the buildings such as curved walls or
arches may be prone to higher error of analysis. Those
limitations may complicate the generalizability of applying this
method as the use of a secondary positional sensor such as inertial
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Zhao et al.
TABLE 1 | Previous research and conclusions related to our study.
Research
Angah and Chen (2020): Tracking multiple
construction workers through deep learning
and the gradient based method with re-
matching based on multi-object tracking
accuracy
Cai et al. (2019): Two-step long short-term
memory method for identifying construction
activities through positional and attentional
cues
Kim et al. (2019): Remote proximity
monitoring between mobile construction
resources using camera-mounted UAVs
Guven and Ergen (2021): Tracking major
resources for automated progress
monitoring of construction activities:
masonry work case
Ryu et al. (2019): Automated action
recognition using an accelerometer-
embedded wristband-type activity tracker
Frontiers in Built Environment | www.frontiersin.org
Tracking solution
Vision-based technology: video
cameras
Vision-based technology:
construction video cameras
Vision-based technology:
unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-
assisted visual monitoring
method
Radio-based technology: RFID
Radio-based technology:
accelerometer-embedded
wristband-type activity tracker
Main results
The authors tested and illustrated a
multiple human tracking framework
which enables automatic detection,
matching and re-matchig
The authors presented a working group
identification method followed by activity
recognition based on both positional and
attentional cues, to recognize complex
interactions from videos
The authors proposed a UAV visual
monitoring solution that automatically
measures proximities (actual distance
from 2D images captured from a UAV)
The authors presented an automated
progress monitoring system that utilized
RFID technology to track a masonry task
activity for multiple resources in
construction
The study allows for automatic
construction action recognition using a
single wrist-worn sensor so that the
characteristics of workers’ actions can
be suggested
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Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting
Conclusions directing our
study
The tracking solution enables multiple
human monitoring but can encounter
heavy interference for issues such as
scale variations, appearance similarity,
occlusions, posture variations, abrupt
movement etc., thus hindering the
tracking and detecting of labor and
material flows indoors
The method allows for identifying
construction activities through positional
and attentional cues so that the
interaction details of multiple entities
captured by videos could be recognized,
but the framework relies on positional and
attentional cues computed based on
manually annotated states of individual
entities. Furthermore, the method was
only tested outdoor construction
projects, so the indoor environment is yet
to be experimented
The method is useful for enabling
automatic measurement of actual
distances among construction entities
which makes it possible for improving
accuracy of interpreting the actual
interactive activities of labor and materials
in our case. However, the framework
underwent difficulties to obtain clear state
of an object due to obstruction of noises
such as sands which may cause false-
positive results. Furthermore, the
feasibility of implementation UAV into
indoor environment can be also
challenging
The tracking method can determine
construction progress by fusing sensor
data collected from multiple resources.
The overall progress reached 95%
accuracy which potentially contributed to
estimating labor and material interactions
onsite. However, the method was only
applied on masonry task, so the accuracy
of other tasks is yet to be tested.
Furthermore, The RFID sensors were
installed in tower crane to enable floor-
level tracking detail, but at this stage the
floor information of where the masonry
materials were delivery was entered
manually which would impact the whole
automated progress monitoring
The tracking approach is good for
capturing workers’ action in construction
sites, which has potential for detecting
ongoing activities, but the method relies
on predetermined and labeled action
classification so the method may work
well on standardized and repeated
actions but not the non-repetitive ones.
Furthermore, the study did not consider
material movement but only focused on
workers, so the interaction of labor and
materials’ movements were not possible
to detect
(Continued on following page)
Zhao et al. Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting

TABLE 1 | (Continued) Previous research and conclusions related to our study.

Research Tracking solution Main results Conclusions directing our

study

Zhao et al. (2019): Real-time resource
tracking for analyzing value-adding time in
construction
Zhang et al. (2021). Wireless
Monitoring–Based Real-Time Analysis and
Early-Warning Safety System for Deep and
Large Underground Caverns
Yang et al. (2020). Automated PPE-Tool
pair check system for construction safety
using smart IoT
Radio-based technology: BLE
Radio-based technology: ZigBee
and general packet radio service
(GPRS)
Radio-based technology:
Wireless Wi-Fi module
The authors implemented a BLE tracking
system to detect and evaluate workers’
uninterrupted presence on-site at the
project level
The study demonstrates a proposed
integration technology of real-time
analysis and safety early warning can
timely detect abnormalities from
monitoring process and stepwise
evaluation results
The study developed an automated
personal protective equipment (PPE)
based tool for pair checking of workers
and their equipment using the internet of
things (IoT) with Wi-Fi modules tagged
on the PPE.
The tracking method allows for passive
and automated monitoring of workers’
presence on-site, which enables the
possibility of continuous tracking of labor
flows; the research did not consider
material tracking, however, so the
interaction of workers and materials in
work locations was unknown
The combined networks of using both
ZigBee and GPRS provided timely and
reliable data support of detecting
abnormalities of workers’ tracking
records. The method could be useful in
our case by adding early-alert mechanism
to enable automatic operation
intervention possibilities from site
managers when the abnormalities of
labor and material movement show
notable. However, the method was only
applied in underground environment and
the scope of the study was focused on
construction safety therefore whether the
method could also enhance onsite
operation and productivity remains
unknown
The method works efficiently checking
paired workers and their tools and
materials onsite, which has good
potentials to be expanded for checking
effectiveness of workers using the tool or
materials. However, the method was only
tested in a lab experiment, so the
challenges revealed in the lab test (such
as heavy consumption of battery using
Wi-Fi module and obstruction of low
illumination) should also be assessed in
real construction projects for evaluation.

measuring unit (IMU) and ultrawide band (UWB) may often be
needed to address these issues (Asadi et al., 2019).
Despite the possibility of identifying site activities and
detecting task status from workers (Luo et al., 2018), the
current state-of-the-art vision-based methods may not
achieve our aim of tracking both material and labor due to
challenges in long-term and robust monitoring of multiple
objectives (Cai and Cai, 2020). For our use case, each work
location would have to have a camera to ensure the visibility
of resources on-site for the entire tracking period; in
addition, multiple tracked resources (e.g., workers and
materials) might interfere in the view and occlude each
other within confined work locations such as apartments.
Given the requirement for extensive data sets while training
the system (e.g., Luo et al., 2018) and the demands for proper
shooting angles from cameras (Zhang et al., 2018), these
complexities mean that vision-based tracking solutions
may not be practical for analyzing the interactive
movement of labor and materials.
Radio-Based Tracking in Construction
Another category of sensor-based monitoring consists of radio-
based tracking technologies, which are already being applied in
many construction projects. Such technologies are typically based
on radio signals that are sent and received among tags (such as
beacons) and gateways (Cai and Cai, 2020; Dror et al., 2019).
Radio-based tracking technologies are less accurate compared
with vision-based tracking technologies (over 1 m for radio-
frequency identification [RFID] and Bluetooth Low Energy [BLE]
technology), but they are reliable in tracked object detection and
identification during the tracking period (Cai and Cai, 2020).
Because of the capability of providing reliable information to
exclude false detection (Cai and Cai, 2020), radio-based tracking
technologies may be more suitable for analyzing the interactions
of multi-resource movements when the constant accuracy of
resource identity is required during the entire monitoring period.
Some common tracking methods include Zigbee (Zhang et al.,
2021), accelerometer wristband (Ryu et al., 2019), Wi-Fi module
(Yang et al., 2020), the aforementioned RFID (Guven and Ergen

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Zhao et al.
2021) and BLE (Olivieri et al., 2017; Park et al., 2017; Zhao et al.,
2017). These methods all appear to eliminate the effort involved
in manual data collection in construction while being accurate
and providing in-time data feedback through an automated
process. For instance, the RFID solution enables tracking by
attaching tags that are active, semi-active, or passive and
having scanners or antennas read the tags (Ergen et al., 2007;
Li et al., 2020).
The advantage of passive RFID technology is that those tags do not
need a separate power supply and are small, inexpensive, and suitable
for nearly all kinds of materials (Teizer et al., 2020). This solution
would be helpful for detecting material flows in different work
locations in parallel with workers’ movements. Passive RFID tags
cannot be used in large-scale environments, however (Wu et al., 2019),
and potential signal blocking under chaotic and dynamic indoor
construction conditions still causes challenges in the signal quality of
this tracking method (Teizer et al., 2020; Costin et al., 2012). In recent
study, RFID tracking methods have also been experimented into
integration of BIM. Chen et al. (2020) proposed a framework to
integrate the use of detailed look-ahead plans when applying BIM and
RFID technologies, aiming at enhancing supply chain visibility and
material flow process in pursuit of Industry 4.0. However, despite of
the potentials to integrate the tracking method into BIM, the
framework has only been implemented on simulated projects, and
the benefits from the real-world projects have not yet been
investigated.
Furthermore, Yang et al. (2020) developed an automatic
monitoring system connecting workers and their associated tools
for pair checking by using Wi-Fi networks on construction sites. The
study demonstrated high potential of using radio-based technology to
enable near real-time detection of interaction of workers and tools.
Their research was conducted only as a lab test and was focused on
construction safety. They did not consider production flows or
operations in their study.
Compared to other radio-based tracking solutions, the BLE
tracking method has the following characteristics and advantages
for indoor monitoring of multiple resources in parallel: 1) the
BLE tracking method involves minimal false negative alerts and
requires the least input of infrastructure and time for calibration
(Park et al., 2016); 2) the solution is cost efficient and lightweight
for passive monitoring in previously tested construction projects
(Zhao et al., 2019); 3) the solution supports multiple resource
tracking with reliable identity information, which is important in
workers’ material handling. The BLE tracking method thus can be
a suitable approach for tracking both labor and material flows for
the purpose of improving material handling and evaluating a
specific material management solution on-site. To the best of our
knowledge, no reported studies to date have used the BLE
tracking method within building projects’ indoor
environments to investigate the interactions of construction
workers and materials.
Linked Data and Semantic Web
Technologies
Linked data is an approach in which the web is used to create links
between data from different systems or sources. The use of linked
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Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting
data offers significant advantages to alleviate the problem of
information heterogeneity. Using this approach, data is
machine-readable, explicit, and linked to other external data
sets and can in turn be linked to and from external data sets
(Bizer et al., 2011). The four basic uses of linked data include 1)
the use of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) to name
resources; 2) the use of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
URIs to provide access to resources via the internet; 3) the
provision of extra information about resources using various
standards, including the Resource Description Framework (RDF)
and RDF query languages such as SPARQL, when looking up
URIs; and 4) the provision of links to related URIs to explore
more related factors.
RDF is the critical technology involved in establishing the
“web of data,” where data is encoded in the form of “subject,
predicate, object” triples (Bizer et al., 2011). These triples are
statements with resources modeled as subjects with their
associated properties and the value or object of the properties.
RDF provides a graph structure in which users can look up any
URI in an RDF graph over the web to retrieve additional
information. Thus, each RDF triple is part of the global web
of data, and each RDF triple can be used as a starting point to
explore the data space.
Increasing implementations of linked data have recently
emerged in the construction domain. Construction
information and data are often characterized as fragmented,
since the construction information is usually acquired via
various information sources and from different stakeholders
who work in various construction disciplines and use a variety
of tools, systems, and software. For example, Pauwels et al. (2015)
reviewed various applications of linked data in the architecture,
engineering, and construction (AEC) domain and concluded that
linked data was used to improve information interoperability and
to link across domains to fuse construction information for
further information utilization. Curry et al. (2013) explored
the use of the linked data approach to integrate cross-domain
building data in order to serve a holistic database for the building
lifecycle. Lee et al. (2016) proposed a linked data framework to
share construction defect information to integrate the defect data
from different silos to alleviate insufficient defect data sharing. To
our knowledge, however, no recent works have used the linked
data approach to integrate indoor positioning and scheduling
information to support the investigation of on-site material and
labor interactions.
Possibilities for the Tracking of Kits and
Workers in Production Flow Improvement
Material handling in construction is still frequently reviewed as
primitive, and advanced on-site material management practice is
necessary for improvement (Caldas et al., 2006). Site material
management could substantially benefit from automated tracking
technology and automation in detection (Grau et al., 2009). For
example, the use of material tracking practice could enhance
worker productivity (Nasir et al., 2010) and minimize the time
workers spend on searching for the right materials (Gurmu,
2019). In particular, material tracking may be used to evaluate
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Zhao et al.
and improve logistics practice: a material kitting solution which
was proposed to enhance the time efficiency (Hanson and Medbo,
2012).
Specifically, the kitting solution in logistics allows for more
efficient and prompt material deliveries directly to work
locations. With origins in manufacturing industries, the
concept of kitting involves packing and delivering the
products necessary for an assembly task into one single
package to a designated workplace (Bozer and McGinnis,
1992). Because kits can be delivered close to the exact work
locations, the practice can enhance productivity by allowing for
more efficient material usage in work locations and reducing the
time spent looking for components required for various tasks
(Tetik et al., 2020), thus contributing to overall work progress and
production stability. But the relationship between material
storage and project productivity has not been examined
thoroughly in construction logistics (Seppänen and Peltokorpi,
2016). Kitting is usually used with other logistics practices such as
logistics hubs and just-in-time (JIT) delivery. Logistics hubs can
be configured to support assembly and kitting activities (Hamzeh
et al., 2007). Tetik et al. (2020) showed, using four case studies,
that a kitting intervention could stabilize assembly work and
increase workers’ productivity and workplace utilization. They
measured work performance via schedule compliance, the share
of value-adding time in work locations, and labor productivity by
applying the camera-based video monitoring (for 44 days in total)
and manual observation (for 25 days in total) methods of data
collection. While their research did demonstrate the value of kits,
their research method was resource intensive and may not be
implemented scalably by practitioners who wish to improve their
logistics practices. The management of kitting still encounters
potential challenges because no automated way currently exists to
calculate key performance indicators (KPIs), which are used to
evaluate the success of the kitting method. Therefore, the benefits
often remain anecdotal, which may hinder the implementation of
such systems.
In the current paper, we first explain the indoor positioning
system infrastructure and a case in which a kitting logistics
solution was used; we then develop a linked data framework
to connect the typically heterogeneous information sources of
labor, materials, and schedules. Next a novel method is proposed
to calculate the time-matching level of workers and materials in
work locations based on their detected uninterrupted presence.
Finally, new KPIs are introduced to evaluate the kitting practice
for the improvement of site material management and work
progress in construction.
METHODS
We follow the design science research methodology in this study
(Peffers et al., 2007) and will demonstrate our research method in
terms of system infrastructure, case description, time-matching
level calculations, and the proposed linked data framework.
The real-time tracking system that was used in previous
research (Zhao et al., 2019) was implemented in this case, but
we expanded our focus into the integration of labor and material
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Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting
tracking in work locations using a kit-based logistic solution. The
underlying kitting solution, as part of the material management
practice, can be assessed based on the “uninterrupted presence
levels” of workers, as captured by the tracking system. A worker’s
uninterrupted presence level is an uninterrupted period that the
worker spends in the same work location before moving to
another location. A threshold is set to define how much time
workers need to stay at one work location before their jobs are
considered uninterrupted (Zhao et al., 2019). For system
implementation, we followed the process of a BLE-based real-
time tracking system from a previous study (Zhao et al., 2019),
including 1) setting up the real-time tracking system based on site
floor plans, 2) evaluating the system accuracy by comparing the
system results to a researcher’s known movements (ground-truth
data), 3) verifying the coverage of the system based on ground-
truth data, and 4) capturing and analyzing the uninterrupted
presence of workers and material kits.
Next, the real-time tracking system architecture and model are
demonstrated. Then our case study is introduced in more detail.
Real-Time Tracking System Infrastructure
Our current research uses the same BLE-based real-time tracking
system that Zhao et al. (2019); Zhao et al. (2021) used in their
previous study. In the model, BLE beacons were used that could be
associated with construction workers who had previously agreed to
be monitored. The beacons send their media access control (MAC)
address to the gateways (Raspberry Pi) periodically at an
approximately one second frequency; the gateways then transmit
the information to the cloud. The information contains a unique
MAC address of each beacon assigned to a worker’s profile and a
time interval for the worker’s presence in the database. The data
analyzer identifies the beacons’ locations from the magnitude of the
received signal strength indicator (RSSI). To solve the potential
signal flickering problems (the gateways are close to each other, and
the results that are detected flicker between locations (Zhao et al.,
2019)), the system uses recent RSSI values; the oldest values are
removed when new values are pushed in the data analyzer. The RSSI
value is averaged and the outlier values minimized to mitigate
potential flickering interference. When a worker moves from one
location to another and is detected by a different gateway, a new time
interval is automatically generated in the system. The cloud provides
downloadable data for future analysis. The architecture of the indoor
tracking application used in our case studies is illustrated in Figure 1
(Zhao et al., 2019).
Case Description
The case a renovation project was selected in Helsinki, Finland.
The renovation work was undertaken in a three-floor building
during June 2018. The case project team applied a kitting logistics
solution because of the potential to improve workplace utilization
rates by minimizing the wasted efforts of material transportation
from storage areas to the site (Tetik et al., 2020). We placed one
gateway in each apartment, with nine total installed gateways
(eight gateways in eight apartments and one at the entry on the
ground floor). Eight workers (including carpenters, plumbers,
plasterers, and bricklayers) agreed to be monitored and were
given the beacons; each of the eight material kits was also attached
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Zhao et al.
FIGURE 1 | The architecture of the tracking system applied in our case studies (adapted from Zhao et al., 2019).
with beacon tags for monitoring. Due to the different sizes of the
apartments, the quantities of materials in the kits could be
different, but the materials were the same for the tracked tasks
in each apartment. Each material kit was assigned to each
apartment for the tasks shown in Table 2. As shown in the
table, each kit included the necessary material for the bathroom
renovation in that specific apartment. The possibility of attaching
both material and labor data enabled us to monitor the
interactions of workers as they went about their on-site
material-related tasks.
Figure 2 shows a simplified floor plan, with gateways marked
in the jobsite. Table 2 shows a task schedule summary for tracked
workers and tasks. Each tracked task follows the same sequence
from apartment A3 to A4, A8, A7, A1, A2, A6, and A5. Each
successor apartment in the sequence for the same task is always
scheduled half a day later than the former apartment, skipping
weekends. The scheduled worktime is from 7:00 to 11:00 in the
morning for the first half day, and from 11:30 to 15:30 in the
afternoon for the second half day. The tasks listed in the table only
covered work that was done in bathrooms. Workers from other
trades (such as electricians and painters) were on the site during
the tracking period in the workflow, but we did not monitor
their tasks.
System Coverage and Accuracy
To ensure the quality of the results, we needed to first test the
accuracy and coverage of the tracking system. The definition of
“accuracy” and “coverage” from previous research (Zhao et al.,
2019) was followed: accuracy is defined as the proportion of how
much time, detected by the system, is recorded in the correct location
and at the correct time, while coverage is defined as the share of the
total time detected by any gateway of the system. For any incorrectly
detected times recorded in the system, we classified these times into
three non-match categories (Zhao et al., 2019): 1) non-match category
1 (the beacons detected by an incorrect gateway for a period of over a
minute); 2) non-match category 2 (data flickering issue, the beacons
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Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting
detected by gateways that were near each other); and 3) non-match
category 3 (the beacons that were not detected at all due to coverage
problems.
The system accuracy and coverage were evaluated by
comparing the tracking results with ground-truth data (Zhao
et al., 2019). We had a researcher simulate workers’ possible job
routines on-site in both cases. The researcher self-recorded his
movements to serve as the ground-truth data. Table 3 presents a
summary of the system accuracy and coverage results in this case.
Compared to previous renovation project tracking in which the
system reached 71% coverage and 55% accuracy via the same
tracking method, with gateways installed at stairwells on each
floor (Zhao et al., 2019), our tracking data achieved sufficient
system accuracy without sacrificing coverage, mainly because we
placed gateways in each apartment near the bathroom area where
the material-related work was scheduled in this renovation
project. This placement decreased the interference compared
to the previously reported case, where gateways on adjacent
floors could interfere with each other and cause detection
inaccuracies.
Linked Data Framework
The proposed framework is designed to provide automatic
identification of labor and material KPIs with limited human
disturbance in order to support stakeholders in understanding the
situation of on-site operations (see Figure 3). The framework also
connects the database of indoor positioning data with external data
sources such as schedules. Three tracks have been designed in this
framework, including Data collecting, Linked data implementing, and
Data processing. The Data collecting is the initial track that obtains the
indoor positioning tracking data of the labor and material kits, as
described in Real-Time Tracking System Infrastructure section—the
real-time tracking system infrastructure and project scheduling data.
Following the data collecting track, the Linked data implementing
track triggers. The major objective of this track is to prepare, convert,
and link the data collected from the indoor positioning system and
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TABLE 2 | Task schedule summary for tracked workers and tasks.

Worker Tasks If using 05-31 05-31 06-01 06-01 06-04 06-04 06-05 06-05 06-06 06-06 06-07 06-07 06-08
type materials, 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00
included
05-31 05-31 06-01 06-01 06-04 06-04 06-05 06-05 06-06 06-06 06-07 06-07 06-08
in the
11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00
kits?

1 1 Yes A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
2 6 Yes A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
2 7 Yes A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
2 8 No A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
3 9 Yes A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
4 12 No A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6
1 2 Yes A3 A4 A8
1 3 Yes A3 A4
06-08 06-08 06-11 06-11 06-12 06-12 06-13 06-13 06-14 06-14 06-15 06-15 06-18
07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00
06-08 06-08 06-11 06-11 06-12 06-12 06-13 06-13 06-14 06-14 06-15 06-15 06-18
11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00
3 9 Yes A5
4 12 No A6 A5
1 2 Yes A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
1 3 Yes A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
1 4 Yes A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2
1 5 Yes A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
4 13 Yes A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
3 10 Yes A3 A4 A8 A7
4 14 Yes A3 A4
06-18 06-18 06-19 06-19 06-20 06-20 06-21 06-21 06-22 06-22 06-25 06-25 06-26
07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00 11:30 07:00
06-18 06-18 06-19 06-19 06-20 06-20 06-21 06-21 06-22 06-22 06-25 06-25 06-26
11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00 15:30 11:00
3 10 Yes A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
4 14 Yes A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
4 15 Yes A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
3 11 Yes A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5
4 16 Yes A3 A4 A8 A7 A1 A2 A6 A5

WORKER TYPES: 1 (bricklayers), 2 (plasterers), 3 (plumbers), 4 (carpenters). TASKS: 1 (door wall masonry), 2 (rebar mesh), 3 (floor concreting and draining), 4 (surface priming), 5 (waterproofing
rolling), 6 (wall priming), 7 (plastering), 8 (cleaning), 9 (drainage), 10 (pipe attaching and connections), 11 (toilet installation and connection), 12 (layout), 13 (frame installation), 14
(suspended ceiling plating), 15 (shower wall fixing), 16 (applying silicone in walls).

FIGURE 2 | A simplified floor plan, with gateways marked on-site.

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Zhao et al.
TABLE 3 | Summary of system accuracy and coverage (all times in minutes).
Total simulation Total matched Non-match category Non-match category
time on-site time 1 time
214.2 189.4 (88.4%) 14.6 (6.8%)
FIGURE 3 | Architecture of the linked data framework.
schedules, based on the linked data method, to create an integrated
database that holds the comprehensive indoor positioning data and
scheduling data. In this track, as a first step, the indoor positioning
data of the tracking labor and material kits collected from the indoor
positioning system and the project schedule is mapped in a certain
ontology and schema for formalizing and creating the interlinks. The
data is then converted into RDF graphs and stored in the RDF graph
store. The final track is the Data processing, in which the integrated
RDF graph is processed and queried to calculate the KPIs of workers’
overlapping time levels and material kits based on the principles
introduced in the following part.
Calculation of Workers’ Time-Matching
Levels and Material Kits in One Apartment
Since kitting material logistic solutions require each material kit
to be delivered directly to each work location (in this case, each
apartment bathroom), workers’ time-matching levels and
material kits can be used to indicate how well the underlying
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Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting
Non-match category Accuracy (%) Coverage (%)
2 time 3 time
4 (1.9%) 6.2 (2.9%) 88.4 97.1
kitting solution has worked and whether the workers were able to
use materials from the kits to conduct their tasks in various work
locations. The workers’ time-matching levels and kits refer to the
time period when workers’ detected presences overlap with the
kits’ detected presences.
Workers and material kits at one work location can have the
following interactions: 1) both the material kit and workers are
in the work location; 2) the material kit is in the work location,
but the worker is not; 3) the worker is in the work location, but
the material kit is not; and 4) neither the material kit nor the
worker is in the work location. Scenario (1) is the best scenario
when a worker is scheduled to perform the material-related
tasks at that location, while scenarios (3) and (4) could indicate
issues with the kitting solution because workers are working
without the kit, or material kits have not been delivered as
planned.
The raw data was analyzed to estimate the overlapping time
level of workers and material kits for each apartment using the
following steps.
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Zhao et al.
1) The uninterrupted presence threshold represents the
minimum time period that a worker needs to be present at
one site location without interruption gaps to be able to count
this presence as uninterrupted (Zhao et al., 2019). We set this
threshold for 10 min as the highest-tested value in Zhao et al.‘s
work (2019) because we wanted to focus on longer continuous
working periods rather than brief visits in a location. Because
we installed one gateway in each apartment in the building, we
were able to classify all detected uninterrupted worker
presences by each work location (in this case, each
apartment). The threshold was not applied on material kits
because, due to their weight and immobility, their location is
more fixed, and filtering out short visits is not required.
2) For a single apartment, we aggregated all detected presences of
the material kit assigned to that apartment. For example, in
apartment 1, we searched for all detected presences of the
material kit assigned for apartment 1.
3) T1
the uninterrupted presence of a worker during the same time
when the material kit for that assigned apartment was present.
4) T2
the uninterrupted presence of a worker matched the time
period of a material kit that was assigned to other apartments
but was present in the current apartment.
5) T3
the uninterrupted presence of a worker that did not fall
into time periods of any material in that apartment (the
uninterrupted presence of the worker thus
T1 + T2 + T3).
6) T4
the operational time of each worker, which was
defined as the time from a worker’s first detected time
of the day to the last detected time of the day (Zhao et al.,
2019).
7) The presence index (Zhao et al., 2019)
T1+T2+T3 T4 . Implementation of the Linked Data
8) The time-matching level of workers and materials in one
apartment was then estimated by comparing T1, T2, T3, and
T4 and their ratios:
• TMD (time matching for designated)
T1+T2+T3 T1
, indicating
the optimum scenario of a worker and the correct material
kit in the apartment.
• TMA (time matching for any)
T1+T2+T3 T1+T2
, indicating the
presence of a worker together with any material kit in that
apartment.
• NM (no material)
T1+T2+T3
T3
, indicating the share of time
when the worker was present in the location without any
material kits.
9) Next, we followed the linked data framework, with the aim of
connecting the indoor positioning data with the external
scheduling information to enable further actual and as-
planned comparisons of KPI calculations:
STMD
scheduled time matching for designated

time when workers have the assigned material
under their task schedules
uninterrupted presences of workers
STMM
scheduled time matching for material

time when the material kit is in the assigned apartment
under task schedule
accumulative task schedule in that apartment
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Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting
Figure 4 shows how the STMD and STMM calculations were
carried out based on detected presences and scheduling
information.
In addition to calculating the time-matching level of
workers and material kits, we were also interested in the
following metrics related to the time and movements of
material kits to evaluate the performance of the logistics
system: 1) delivery times of the kits to the first detected
apartment on-site; 2) removal times of the kits from the
last detected apartment on-site; 3) number of times each kit
moved between the delivery time and removal time. Those
metrics contribute to understanding in more details of the
material flows such as waiting time and the level of
unnecessary inventory. Although these metrics are not
new, the novelty of the method lies in using the proposed
lightweight monitoring system to obtain the time and
location information automatically and passively to
analyze these metrics without time consuming data
collection efforts.
In summary, together with comparing the time-matching level
of workers and material kits based on their overlapping
uninterrupted presence, kit delivery times, and movements
based on the analyses of automatically detected temporal and
spatial information by the real-time tracking system, we were able
to assess the soundness of the kitting solution in this case, such as
by examining how well the kitting material management practice
worked in each work location.
Framework
Our aim was to establish and develop an automated process of
data analysis modeling where the tracking data of cross-type
resources such as materials and labors, together with workers’
schedules, could be linked and integrated into one proposed
framework. Based on the architecture discussed in the Method
section, we then implemented the linked data framework for the
case study (Figure 5).
Ontology Selection and Mapping
A standard data structure was used as the basis for formalizing
and integrating the indoor positioning data. In this research, we
used the extension of digital construction ontologies (Törmä and
Zheng, 2020), or DiCon, for the logistics structure (Zheng et al.,
2020). DiCon is a set of ontologies that may be used to define the
basic terminologies and relations of the digitalized construction
process. DiCon is also used to model and represent the digitalized
information obtained from the implementation of information
and communication technologies (ICTs) in the construction
domain. Using DiCon, we used classes including “person,”
“batches,” “location,” “sensors,” and “events” and their
interrelations to represent the indoor position data in this
case. In the DiCon logistics extension, the “material kit” is
defined to represent material kits, which are groups of
material batches. The mapping of the data to DiCon and
logistics is shown in Figure 6. For the scheduling data, the
information of every task and its assigned location and labor
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Zhao et al. Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting

FIGURE 4 | STMD and STMM calculation demonstration.

FIGURE 5 | Detailed process of linked data framework implementation.

can also be represented based on DiCon. Every record of the the gateway captures the signal from the beacon. Both beacons
indoor positioning system is considered to be an “event,” which is and gateways are considered to be sensors where beacons are
observed by a beacon and a gateway during a time interval when hosted by workers and material, which are known as the instance

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Zhao et al.
FIGURE 6 | Mapping the indoor position data to DiCon.
of “person” and “material kit” classes in the DiCon logistics
extension. The gateways are hosted by apartment, which is a
“location.”
Data Conversion and Storage
In order to establish the linked data for further data processing, the
data and information obtained from the indoor positioning system
and project schedule must be converted from tabular format in a
spreadsheet into RDF format based on the previous result of
ontology mapping. To achieve the conversion, in this case, a
Python script was developed by utilizing an open source Python
library called RDFlib (2009) to handle the conversion process.
After the conversion, the RDF graphs were generated and
stored in the Graph DB store. Graph DB is among the most
popular RDF stores for storing and managing semantic
information serialized in RDF format. In the Graph DB
environment, users can also conduct SPARQL queries to
process, search, and retrieve information from the database.
After the implementation of the linked data framework, we
then conducted data analysis on material flows and time-
matching levels of workers and kits, with the aim of
calculating the material-related metrics introduced in the
Method section.
RESULTS
Material Flows
Figure 7 shows an example of one material kit (assigned for
apartment A7) that was moved inside the building during the
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Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting
tracking period. The material kit was first detected at
apartment A7 at 07:03 on June 1. The material kit was then
moved to apartment A2 at 17:04 on June 17 and subsequently
moved to apartment A1 at 11:04 on June 22. Finally, the kit was
moved to the entry area of the building at 08:20 on June 26.
Table 4 provides a summary of the moving times of each
material kit with its delivery and removal times on-site, in
addition to the schedules of task start and end times in the
respective apartments. Because the presence of the material kit
for apartment A3 was not found in the system due to the loss of
the beacon attached to the kit, we decided to exclude
apartment A3 from the analysis.
Out of a total of seven material kits, six were delivered on-
site earlier than required (the first task scheduled in the
apartment), and six were removed from the site later than
required (the last task scheduled in the apartment). On
average, kits were moved 6.9 times between apartments.
The average number of move times for the cases where kits
were delivered earlier than required (apartments 1, 2, 5, 6, 7,
and 8) was 6.6, lower than for the kit that was delivered later
than required (apartment 4), which was moved 8 times. In our
case, the delays of material kits delivered later than the first
tasks scheduled led to more movement of kits between
apartments on average. It should be noted that if the kitting
solution had worked perfectly, no movements between
apartments would have occurred.
For the task schedule in apartment A7, the material kit for
apartment A7 was moved away from apartment A7 at 12:43 on
June 17, but the scheduled end time of the last task in that
apartment was at 11:30 on June 22. However, after the material kit
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Zhao et al. Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting

FIGURE 7 | Material flow of the material kit for apartment A7 inside the building.

TABLE 4 | Moved times between apartments for each material kit.

Material kit Moved times Kit delivery Kit removal Schedule for Schedule for
for each between apts. times when times when start time end time
apartment During tracking detected 1st detected last of 1st of last
time time task in task in
(apt. #) (apt. #)

A1 kit for apartment 1 5 26-05-2018 17:20 26-06-2018 11:57 04-06-2018 07:00 (1) 22-06-2018 15:30 (1)
A2 kit for apartment 2 8 28-05-2018 13:14 25-06-2018 07:30 04-06-2018 11:30 (2) 25-06-2018 11:30 (2)
A4 kit for apartment 4 8 31-05-2018 16:50 01-07-2018 19:14 31-05-2018 11:30 (4) 21-06-2018 11:00 (4)
A5 kit for apartment 5 7 30-05-2018 11:36 27-06-2018 12:47 05-06-2018 11:30 (5) 26-06-2018 11:30 (5)
A6 kit for apartment 6 5 31-05-2018 09:22 27-06-2018 19:10 05-06-2018 07:00 (6) 25-06-2018 15:30 (6)
A7 kit for apartment 7 3 01-06-2018 07:03 27-06-2018 10:55 01-06-2018 11:30 (7) 22-06-2018 11:30 (7)
A8 kit for apartment 8 12 31-05-2018 09:09 29-06-2018 10:01 01-06-2018 07:00 (8) 21-06-2018 15:30 (8)
Average 6.9

for A7 was moved away, the material kit for A4 was moved to
apartment A7 from June 18 to June 21, which covered the
remaining time for tasks required in the apartment.
The material kit for A7 was observed in apartment A1
from June 22 to June 26, which covered the remaining time
for tasks required in apartment A1 after the material kit for
A1 had already been moved away, at 12:28 on June 18. These
kit movements showed that the implementation of the kitting
process encountered problems during this project because
the originally assigned kit could not be used to complete
the work.
Time-Matching Level of Labor and Materials
in the Apartment
Next, we calculated how the material flow interacted with the
location information of workers in the apartment. Due to space
limitations, we have visualized the results of only one apartment
(apartment A7), and we present the results of the whole data set in
a later section. Figure 8 shows a visualization of the carpenter in
apartment A7, while the material kits for A4 and A7 were
detected as being present during the same tracking period of
June 1 to 21. Figure 8 also shows that the worker was mostly
present throughout the same time range as the material kit for A7
in that apartment, except for his or her presence from June 18 to
21, when the material kit for A7 was undetected while the
material kit for A4 was present. Because the task of suspended
ceiling plating was scheduled in apartment A7 starting on the
afternoon of June 18, the worker could have taken the suspended
ceiling plates from the material kit assigned for apartment A4
instead.
Table 5 summarizes the TMD, TMA, and NM results for
carpenter one and how these values were calculated in apartment
A7. Because we set the threshold of an uninterrupted presence for
workers at 10 min, all time intervals from workers that are shorter
than 10 min were omitted from the analysis. The 11.1% of NM
time of the assigned worker (carpenter 1) with material presence
represents time in which the worker was detected in the
apartment without any material kits being around. A few
possible reasons for this situation are as follows.

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Zhao et al. Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting

FIGURE 8 | Movement visualization of carpenter 1 with material kits in apartment A7.

TABLE 5 | TMD, TMA, and NM results for carpenter one in apartment seven. TABLE 6 | Summary of the time-matching levels in all apartments (all numbers in
minutes except percentages).
Metrics Calculation Results
Apartment T1 T2 T3 TMD (%) TMA (%) NM (%)
T4 2,794 min
T1 242 min 1 3,534 47 20 98.1 99.4 0.6
T2 58 min 2 2,225 383 236 78.2 91.7 8.3
T3 30 min 4 604 18 46 90.4 93.2 6.8
Presence index (T1+T2+T3)/T4 11.8% 5 283 81 126 57.8 74.3 25.7
TMD T1/(T1+T2+T3) 73.4% 6 620 117 231 64.0 76.1 23.9
TMA (T1+T2)/(T1+T2+T3) 88.9% 7 1,432 363 193 72.0 90.3 9.7
NM 1-TMA 11.1% 8 181 9 73 68.7 72.1 27.9
Sum 8,879 1,018 925 82.0 91.5 8.5
SD 1,140 148 83 13.3 10.0 10.0

1) The worker was waiting for the material.

2) The worker had to retrieve the material from other places (or
parts of other kits) and then returned to do the work.
3) Materials were delivered as supplemental orders and were not
included in the original kits.
4) The worker could have been with the material kit for
apartment A3, since the movement of that kit remained
unknown due to the loss of the beacon for that kit.
5) The material kit was incorrectly detected (for example,
because of flickering between apartments). This impact was
minimal, however, because during manual investigation of the
time period between June 1 and 27, from the kit being
delivered to the site until its removal, we noted that only
4.33 min of flickering (detection in different apartments)
occurred. Although the exact activities of the worker
during this time were unknown, the first three points could
be regarded as an indication of problems in the kitting process.
In addition, we noted two time gaps in the material kit for
apartment A7, between June 3 and 4 and between June 13 and
14. During these times, the material kit for apartment A7 was
found in A3: from 11:06 on June 3 to 6:54 on June 4, and from
15:34 on June 13 to 7:10 on June 14.
Evaluation of the Time-Matching Level in all
Tracked Locations and for Different
Tracked Workers
To determine whether the tracking of material kits and labor
together would add more insightful information to the evaluation
of the kitting solution on-site, we then calculated and
summarized the metrics, grouped by location and workers (see
Tables 6 and 7).
Overall, 8.5% of the total uninterrupted presence of all workers
(925 min) represented the time when the workers were present
either with the A3 kit or with no material kits in the same
apartment. In addition, 18% of the total uninterrupted presences
(1,943 min) represented the time when the workers were present
without material kits designated for the underlying apartments.
The standard deviation (SD) of all apartments (except apartment
3) was 10%, so we noted some locations where the kitting process
worked better (i.e., with a low NM value, for example 0.6% in
apartment 1) and some locations where workers were not using
the kits for a large portion of time (for example apartment 8,
with 27.9%).

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Zhao et al. Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting

TABLE 7 | Summary of the time-matching levels for each individual worker (all numbers in minutes except percentages).

Workers Operational T1 T2 T3 Presence TMD TMA NM

time index (%) (%) (%)
(%)

Bricklayer 1 10,375 1,111 381 125 15.6 68.7 92.3 7.7

Bricklayer 2 9,539 1,785 82 93 20.5 91.1 95.2 4.8
Carpenter 1 10,938 1,135 160 209 13.7 75.5 86.1 13.9
Carpenter 2 9,391 1,107 102 193 14.9 78.9 86.3 13.7
Plasterer 1 5,737 937 85 42 18.6 88.0 96.0 4.0
Plasterer 2 6,815 1,089 98 103 18.9 84.4 92.0 8.0
Plumber 1 6,117 723 34 112 14.2 83.2 87.1 12.9
Plumber 2 6,793 993 75 48 16.4 89.0 95.7 4.3
Sum/mean 65,705 8,879 1,018 925 16.5 82.0 91.5 8.5
SD 1,928 285 101 56 2.3 7.1 4.0 4.0

Next, the time-matching level based on individual workers
throughout their operations in all work locations was evaluated
(Table 7).
For the individual workers, the SD values for NM were much
smaller than for the locations. The problems with kitting seemed
to occur mostly with carpenters, while other trades showed
smaller NM values. The carpenters were scheduled to do the
non-material-related task (layout) first, and then to start using the
materials in the kit; therefore they may have been in work
locations before the kits had arrived, thus leaving larger NM
values compared to other crews. In addition, all workers were
detected to have periods in the presence of material kits other
than those that were designated, on average 9.4% of the time [T2/
(T1 + T2 + T3)]. The results in Table 7 show an estimate of how
well the kitting solution worked for each tracked worker.
Estimation of Compliance With the
Schedule
Next, SPARQL queries were used to calculate how well the
uninterrupted presences of workers and material kits matched
with the schedule. The proposed linked data framework was used
to create an integrated RDF graph of the linked indoor positioning
data and the scheduling information. This section presents an
example of using SPARQL queries based on semantic logics and
structured data to explore the worker and material kit interaction
performance in compliance with the schedule. In the example, the
“time matching for designated” (TMD) indices were further
specified to investigate the compliance with the schedules. TMD
was further addressed as the time-matching level of a worker’s
uninterrupted presence matching the material kit assigned to a
specific apartment in compliance with the schedule (“scheduled
time matching for designated” [STMD]). STMD was designed to
identify the time of labor-material matching in the schedule-assigned
work locations, while STMM was designed to investigate the spatial-
temporal metric of the material kit in compliance with the schedule.
Due to space limitations, the STMD of carpenter two in apartment
seven and the STMM of the A7 material kit were selected as a case to
illustrate the query process. The queries were conducted in the
Graph DB environment. The results of the queries show the
capability to flexibly process and retrieve meaningful information
from organized indoor positioning data formed in RDF.
The first query is used to identify the uninterrupted presence
of carpenter two in apartment 7 (T1 + T2 + T3) from the
processed database, in which the uninterrupted presence
threshold of 10 min had already been applied. The query
could thus be directly conducted to find all the records of the
uninterrupted presence of carpenter 2. In this query, the variables
to be explored were “?duration.” In SPARQL, SELECT is a
reserved function for listing all the variable results of interest
that satisfy the conditions from the WHERE section. The query
follows the logic where a worker hosts a beacon first and then the
beacon and gateway observe the event, which contains the
temporal information of the presence duration. In this case,
we specified apartment seven and carpenter 2 as an example.
The second query is used to find the total overlapping time of a
worker with an apartment-assigned material kit and to check if
the worker’s presence is in the designated apartments of all
scheduled activities of carpenter 2—in other words, to identify
the T1 that fits the schedule. The query follows the logic of first
searching material kits and worker temporal overlaps at
designated apartments and then comparing the identified
overlapping time to the scheduled operation time in that
location. The logic of identifying the overlap and comparing
the overlapping time with the schedule is based on Allen’s interval
algebra (Allen, 1983).
We conducted the third query to find the duration of the
corresponding material kit localized in the assigned apartment
that fit the schedule. Allen’s interval algebra (Allen, 1983) was
also used in this query to find the overlap time of the scheduled
activity and material presence in the target apartment.
The results of the three queries were then further processed
based on the principles defined in the Method section. The
accumulated results from the first query represent the
uninterrupted presence of carpenter two in apartment 7 (T1 +
T2 + T3), which is 2,233.32 min. The accumulated results from
the second query represent the total time of the labor and the
designated material kit in compliance with the schedule, which is
228 min. By dividing the uninterrupted presence accumulated
from the result of the first query, the STMD may be calculated as
10.21%. The accumulated results from the third query represent
the total time of the material kit in the assigned apartment that
matches the scheduled tasks in that location, which is
2,132.27 min. By dividing the total duration of the planned

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Zhao et al.
tasks (7,200 min) accumulated from the schedule, the STMM of
the A7 material kit was calculated to be 29.61%.
As shown in the example, calculating the STMD and STMM is
possible by integrating the indoor positioning data and the
scheduling information. The results of the STMD and STMM
values are an enrichment of the material-related KPIs, which can
provide further information for site managers to evaluate how the
underlying kitting solution has worked for a specific worker (e.g.,
carpenter 2) or the kit (e.g., the A7 material kit) against his or her
schedule. The implementation of the linked data framework also
provides an alternative for identifying the desired time-matching
level of workers and material kits in construction operations with
a more automated and flexible procedure.
To summarize the results, the following outcome based on the
proposed methods and the real-time monitoring system was
achieved: 1) calculated kit moving times inside the building
and analysis of the material kit flows from the delivery to the
site until the removal of the kits. 2) investigated in detail the time-
matching level of labor and materials in apartments, providing
insights and evaluation of the tested kitting solution. 3) estimated
level of compliance with schedule by applying the proposed
linked data framework to connect other external available data
sources. Next, the discussion was presented regarding the
generalizability, reliability of the system, comparison to
previous studies, contribution to knowledge, implication and
limitation as follows.
DISCUSSION
Generalizability of the Method and the
Reliability of the System
Little research to date has focused on the combination of real-
time tracking for labor and material in construction sites for the
purposes of addressing material mishandling and evaluating
kitting solutions. In a few previous empirical works,
researchers have analyzed material tracking data to support
better material handling and site-work performance, but the
generalizability of their methods has varied. For instance, Grau
et al. (2009) developed localization algorithms based on a
combination of RFID and Global Positioning System (GPS)
technologies to capture the time spent on activities directly
related to tracked steel material components and to analyze
the impact of the tracking application on steel erection
productivity. Because GPS is unsuitable for indoor
environments, however, the generalizability of this method is
limited to the outdoors. Tetik et al. (2020) evaluated the
applicability of kitting by comparing four projects with and
without kitting solutions, with a focus on the impact of work
performance and management requirements. While they showed
that kitting solutions could improve product flow and work
performance, our focus is on the effectiveness of an applied
kitting solution by showing the variability of kit presences
associated with workers in multiple work locations. Their
method can be used to capture logistics performance on a
more detailed level but is not scalable due to the manual
analysis required. Our approach presents a scalable solution
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Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting
based on the uninterrupted presence of workers and kits in
work locations that still enables the calculation of KPIs, which
can be used to evaluate logistics performance.
Our case was an apartment renovation project where small
locations (in this case apartment bathrooms) enclosed with walls
were used for analysis. Due to the project type, the accuracy and
coverage values were high. In earlier research, Bluetooth-based
systems showed lower accuracy and coverage values in projects
with large, open areas. Kitting as a logistics solution has often
been implemented first on project types with small work areas,
because kitting is mainly used to solve issues related to a lack of
space (Corakci, 2008). Large open areas typically have better
possibilities to store materials, and thus the benefits of kitting may
not be so large.
Generalizability to other project types should be explored in
future research. The current method depends on apartment-specific
material kits delivered to each work location. This type of logistics
enables easy tracking because tracking beacons are required only for
each kit. Although the system could, in theory, be applied for other
types of materials as well, each tracked material has associated costs
in time. A typical construction site contains an enormous amount of
materials, and tagging all materials is not always practical. We
analyzed this kitting solution in particular because of its ability to
easily map materials to locations and tasks and the low number of
tracked elements required. Previous researchers who have
investigated materials on worksites, such as Grau et al. (2009),
have taken a similar approach by focusing on individual types of
materials, although the individual materials in the kits are also of
interest. In future studies, the current method could be applied on
selected individual materials to determine if their movements differ
from the movements of kits.
The reliability of the system depends on the following factors:
1) the tracking accuracy and coverage. In our case, the accuracy
reached 88.4% and the coverage reached 97.1%, which indicated
high overall tracking reliability of system. 2) system
implementation and maintenance. The system depends on
assurance of gateway connectivity, power availability, and on
workers and material kits carrying beacons at all times. In our
case the beacon for the A3 kit was unfortunately lost onsite, which
affected the monitoring of A3 apartment.
In any case, based only on the movement of tracked material
kits, knowing whether a specific material part in a kit has been
utilized is difficult. In the future, we aim to test the performance of
a kitting solution by focusing on the material utilization level. For
instance, the tracking method could be supplemented by vision-
based technology, such as by integrating a camera monitoring
and indoor positioning system in the work location. By
implementing both vision-based technology and indoor
positioning, we would not need to monitor the videos all the
time but could instead shift our focus to the time period when the
KPIs (e.g., NM) are alerted during the kitting process.
Comparison to Project-Level Presence
Indices of Previous Studies
The concept of project-level presence indices was first introduced
by Zhao et al. (2019). Such indices indicate the percentage of
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Zhao et al.
workers’ uninterrupted presences inside their daily accumulated
operation times at the project level. This setup means that
project-level indices only show workers’ uninterrupted
presence values and take all workers into account. By
differentiating work locations and non-work locations, project-
level indices require small amounts of context information but
provide important indications such as estimates of the overall
efficiency of the worksite based on the share of workers’ actual
presence levels throughout a project.
Compared with project-level presence indices, in the current
paper the concept was expanded further by dividing indices into
categories based on the time-matching of material kits. These
material-related uninterrupted presence metrics include TMD,
TMA, and NM, which also require tracking data from the
material kits for each work location. A project-level presence
index is a metric of operations flow at the project level. Therefore,
the material-related uninterrupted presence uses the resource
flows from both material and labor perspectives, which creates
opportunities to evaluate the current material management
practice (in this case, the kitting solution). For instance, in the
current case, the overall project-level presence index was 16.5%,
which was lower than in previous studies with the same threshold
value (Zhao et al., 2019). The index also indicates that 83.5% of
the time, the worker was either undetected inside the building or
was detected at one location for less than 10 min. Additionally, in
our case the tracked material kits were not always at the
designated location, and the workers were not always present
with the correct kit in the apartment.
The current research extends the research conducted by Zhao
et al. (2019) by investigating also material flows which have not
been addressed in their previous studies. Zhao et al. (2019)
assessed an overall percentage of workers’ uninterrupted
presence level for all workers in the project during the
tracking period. This kind of project-level indices cannot be
used to understand root causes of problems to inform
improvement interventions. The project-level presence indices
reflect on the productivity level of the entire project but do not
include connections to task schedule or other site data sources.
The measurement of labor and material kit integrated
uninterrupted presence creates some new and deeper analysis
opportunities. The efficiency of the logistic system can be
analyzed by looking at materials and labor together in
connection with the schedule. For that purpose, our study
introduces new material-related metrics which can be used to
provide supplemental information on top of the project-level
uninterrupted presence indices. Therefore, the key motivation of
this research was to broaden the knowledge of previous studies
toward material management practices.
Overall, presence indices, which also consider material flows,
provide a deeper understanding of production performance than
those indices that rely only on the tracking systems of workers’
location. In addition to project-level presence indices, the several
metrics can be used to evaluate the kitting logistics solution from
the following perspectives.
1) Waiting or other non-value-adding time spent in work
locations can be analyzed from time-matching levels
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Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting
between workers and material kits (TMA and NM). The
smaller the NM (or larger the TMA) value, the lower time
disparity of workers who lack any kits.
2) Success of having a correct kit in a work location can be
analyzed from time-matching levels between workers and the
material kits assigned to the specific apartment (TMD). A
larger TMD value implies that the assigned material kit with
planned material contents was more successfully adopted in
practice. The difference between TMA and TMD (TMA-
TMD) also suggests a time level where the kits assigned to
other apartments were occupied in the apartment when the
assigned kit was absent, thus indicating potential work that
workers needed to use from other apartments’ materials for
the underlying apartment. The TMA value may indicate
problems with the bill of materials used to assemble the kit
and will likely rise as a result of incorrect quantities or kinds of
materials in the kits.
3) Success of following the original work plan can be analyzed
from time-matching levels between workers with material kits
under their original schedules (STMD and STMM). Larger
STMD or STMM values imply that workers are spending time
with material kits in work locations following the original
plans. This information could be particularly valuable in
projects that use, for example, the takt production concept,
where the schedule is committed and followed (Frandson and
Tommelein, 2014).
4) Unnecessary inventory can be calculated from the detected
delivery time of material kits compared with the time when
the first task requires the material in that kit. The lower the
time gap between these two times, the less waiting or delays of
the material to be used will occur. Unnecessary inventory is
one waste type related to materials, and kitting practice is
typically planned to be JIT (Tetik et al., 2020; Tommelein and
Li, 1999).
5) Wasted time for moving of materials can be analyzed from the
moving times of material kits between work locations. With
more detected moving times of material kits, workers
unavoidably waste more time transporting kits to the
required apartments. In an optimally working kitting
process, only one movement of the kit to its location, and
then one movement out, should occur once all materials have
been consumed.
In summary, we argue that a well-performing kitting solution
should have 1) high TMA and TMD values, 2) ideally little
difference between TMA and TMD values, and 3) no kit
movements between work locations. If scheduling information
is taken into consideration, then a good performance should also
require high STMD and STMM values with the least possible time
gap between detected delivery times and task schedules required
for the underlying material kits.
Contributions to Current Knowledge
In the current paper, we contribute to tracking methods in
construction by developing and demonstrating a method to
manage kit-based logistics management using an indoor real-
time tracking system to monitor both material and worker flows.
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Zhao et al.
More specifically, the tracking method is developed to integrate
material kit and labor tracking for a kitting logistics solution in a
scalable way by measuring the uninterrupted presences of both
labor and material kits.
One of the specific contributions to the methods based on the
presence of materials and workers in work locations is that the
developed method does not require manual observation or
watching through camera videos to understand the process.
For example, using camera monitoring and manual
observations, Tetik et al. (2020) pointed out that the effects of
random factors may be large due to a relatively small data set. Our
method does not rely on manual analysis and thus is scalable to
large data sets, which will help to avoid random factors.
In addition to the methodological development, the contribution
to construction management lies in the introduction and
demonstration of several KPIs to evaluate the effectiveness of the
kitting solution. When the kitting process works in an optimal way, it
fulfills the following requirements: 1) kits only go to the right
apartment, 2) kits only move in once and out once, and 3)
workers are present in the planned work location with the correct
kit. The results have shown that none of the requirements were met in
the project we tested, so the implemented kitting practice was far from
optimal. Calculating these KPIs in real time could allow management
to find the root causes of problems and to continuously improve on
material logistic solutions. Such a system could be seen as a digital twin
of the logistics process and could drive improvement in the way that
Sacks et al. (2020) proposed in their recent paper on digital twin
construction.
In the current paper, the existing knowledge was also
contributed on data linkages in construction projects by we
investigating the labor-material interaction in compliance with
operation schedules. By applying the linked data method, we
introduced a novel approach to integrating heterogenous data
from both positioning tracking and schedules. With our
introduction of the linked data approach, the cross-type
resource data in construction becomes linked and machine-
readable, which provides easy utilization of semantics for KPI
calculations and the ability to conduct analyses without
fragmentary raw data processing. The integrated data enables
the evaluation of the effectiveness of kitting solutions compared
to the plans, which cannot be achieved by individual data
streams alone.
Managerial Implications
This work has several managerial implications for operations
management in construction based on the proposed tracking
application framework. First, the proposed system and KPIs
can help site managers to understand how well the applied
kitting solution performs. For instance, the disparity from the
optimal situation quantified by NM can be used to indicate
the amount of time when workers are present without any
materials. Managers can use the method and KPIs when
reallocating working resources to those places where the
kitting practice appears to have the most challenges. For
example, our case apartment A8 was found to be the most
complex work location with the highest NM and kit-moving
times, which should urge the site managers in this case to pay
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Labor-Material Tracking in Kitting
special attention to the task progress in apartment A8. Faulty
amounts or kinds of materials for that apartment likely
explained these issues.
Second, for logistics providers, the automated detected
timestamps of kit delivery and removal in/out from the
work locations, and the value difference between TMA and
TMD, can provide useful information about the correctness
and punctuality of kit deliveries. If TMA is equal to TMD,
then all assigned material kits have been correctly placed in
the apartments, and no other material kits are needed for
replacement. Logistics providers can use the information of
kit delivery and removal to estimate approximate kit usage
using cycle times in each work location. They can also
estimate the right quantity and correct size of kits to be
delivered to the assigned apartment. Based on real-time data
logistics, providers can dynamically update kit delivery plans
and executions to the site (Kalsaas et al., 2014).
Third, for task schedulers, the study will provide practical KPIs
for evaluating and continuously improving their processes.
STMD can be used to evaluate the compliance levels of
workers with the assigned material kits in apartments, while
STMM can be used to evaluate the share of time when the
material kit is placed elsewhere under the task schedule.
In summary, our research has introduced these KPI metrics to
enable real-time monitoring for detecting problems in kitting
practices in work locations. These metrics can potentially benefit
logistics providers, site managers, and schedule planners. Lean
interventions should be undertaken accordingly if the problems
appear to be continuous, as indicated by the KPIs.
The linked data method also provides the opportunity to align
heterogenous data sets from various domains or systems with the
indoor position tracking system. With linked data sets, more
applications can be used based on indoor positioning than just
KPI identification. For example, by combining real-time indoor
positioning tracking with building information modeling (BIM),
users can gain a prompt and direct visual-based awareness of the
on-site work situation and thus can flexibly adjust and control the
on-site work to improve productivity.
Overall, we have shown that waste is a problem with flows
during value-adding activities on-site rather than being caused
only by a single worker or by individual materials being
misplaced. The use of presence information from both
workers and materials can offer simple KPIs that can act as
proxies for waste indication—for instance, to evaluate how much
the presence of workers and material kits would be affected by JIT
logistics (e.g., kitting practice) in different projects.
Limitations
The current research does have a few limitations. One of the main
limitations of this method may be described as identification issues of
materials and kits. Based on the real-time tracking system used in this
case, which showed satisfactory coverage (97.1%) and accuracy
(88.4%), we saw relatively good results from worker and material
timestamps to reduce resource flows on-site. We were unable to
identify the presence of specific materials in the kits, however, because
we only placed beacons to monitor the kits in our study. In future
studies, we propose to add features such as sending notices to workers
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Zhao et al.
for simple confirmation of their current activities (such as waiting for
materials, idle status, etc.) when the TMA degree appears to decrease
during the day. In this way, sorting through all uninterrupted worker
presences to search for time durations could be avoided, which hinders
the effectiveness of the kitting solution. We would also be able to learn
the actual reasons for better effectiveness from workers’ direct
confirmations.
Another limitation is that one beacon for the A3 kit was lost
onsite, so the NM periods may have included times in which
workers were actually with the A3 kit, thus making the actual NM
smaller. In this case, some indication of the effectiveness of the
underlying kitting practice could still be obtained by examining
the value of TMD and checking on a worker’s status with the
correct material kits in an apartment (i.e., the designated kits). For
future study, beacons will be tagged with the material kits all the
time during the tracking periods.
In this research, Linked data method was implemented to
integrate the heterogeneous indoor positioning and the operation
schedule information. Such integration combines data sources
from different systems, and further enables the calculation of the
KPIs with schedule compliance (STMD and STMA) that cannot
be achieved with solo data streams based on previous methods.
However, in this research only these two data sources were
obtained, which means that only STMD and STMA can be
calculated. If more types of data sources could be acquired,
more potential KPIs could be also calculated. For example, if
the BIM model of the project could also be obtained, it is possible
to use the BIM quantity takeoff to calculate the workload of each
task in the schedule, and further to calculate the work efficiency of
each task. In the future research, the goal is to collect
comprehensive digitalized data from one construction project
and integrate all digital data sources and develop more accurate
KPIs to represent the construction productivity.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have illustrated how our proposed real-time
tracking system and linked data framework were applied in
an indoor bathroom renovation construction project for the
automated detection and analysis of time-matching levels of
material kits and workers based on their uninterrupted
presence. New KPIs were developed that can be measured
in real time and offer opportunities to improve material and
labor flows for kitting logistics solutions based on the
proposed metrics. We have learned that notable durations
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DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
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AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Conceptualization, JZ, YZ, OS, and AP; Methodology, JZ and YZ;
Data Collection, JZ; Data Analysis, JZ and YZ; Writing—original
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FUNDING
This work was supported by the Intelligent Construction Site
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Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the
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